Iceland is a great example of a country which had the courage to prosecute bankers, and that’s largely because it’s not controlled by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, Max Keiser, financial analyst and host of the Keiser Report on RT, says.

Four former bank bosses in Iceland have been jailed for financial
fraud. They were accused of hiding the fact that a Qatari
investor bought into the firm [Kaupthing Bank], with money lent
illegally by the bank itself. It went bust in 2008, helping to
cripple Iceland's economy.

Keiser says, what is considered a crime in Iceland is flourishing
thanks to government support in the UK and the US.

RT: What are the broader ramifications of
this case?

Max Keiser: I think we need to understand that
in this crime that was committed in Iceland, with the
participation of the government in Qatar, you have a classic
Ponzi scheme where a bank was lending money to Qatar to buy
shares in banks in Iceland to artificially inflate the price of
the stock of the bank, and then they would use that artificially
high bank stock price to make loans, to make acquisitions and
then when the bubble burst it all came down. And of course there
was a crime committed, and the Icelandic government is now
prosecuting for that financial fraud.

But what's interesting is that if you look at what's happening in
the UK right now - HSBC, Barklays, Lloyds, and the Royal Bank of
Scotland in particular - they are participating in exactly the
same fraud with the help and participation of the Bank of
England. It's a program called quantitative easing where central
bank loans to the commercial banks to buy stock or bonds in this
case in the central bank. So they are doing the same exact thing
that in Iceland is a crime.

I think because Iceland, Russia, Iran and China are all banking
systems that are outside of the control of the Federal Reserve in
America or the Bank of England in the UK, they are free to
prosecute financial crimes. They don't have that freedom in the
UK because the bankers are protected by the Bank for
International Settlements in Switzerland, the Federal Reserve in
New York who collude on a global basis to line the pockets of the
criminals, in this case the bankers in the UK and the US, and of
course their economies are suffering catastrophically as a result
of this: poverty is on the rise, and living standards in the UK
are crashing worse than they've ever crashed since the Victorian
times.

RT:Any chance other high-flying financial
scammers will now find themselves in the dock on similar
charges?

MK: The banking zones outside of Russia, Iran,
China and Iceland are pretty much controlled by what's known as
the Rothschild influence. The Rothschild of course in their
family really owns the Central Banks in America and the Bank of
England. But China, Russia, Iran and Iceland don't have to answer
to the Rothschild, so they are free to prosecute what I call
financial terrorists.

RT:To what extent should governments
control financial institutions and their deals.

MK: Governments are completely co-opted by the
bankers. The UK government has been co-opted by Barclays. And the
Royal Bank of Scotland in particular was just caught targeting
small businesses for death where they were setting small
businesses up to fail so their affiliates could swoop in and buy
assets for pennies on the dollar. So [they've been] acting as
what I call financial terrorists with the full cooperation of
David Cameron, George Osborne and Mark Carney, head of the Bank
of England. They are fully engaged in the confiscation of wealth
using what I call financial apartheid and other tricks to
essentially steal wealth from the vast majority for the benefit
of a very few bankers who work globally.

But not in Iceland! Iceland had the courage to do what we've seen
in some other territories, by prosecuting bankers. In Vietnam a
banker caught committing a financial crime was executed. There
needs to be a deterrent against a financial fraud of this
magnitude.

Capital punishment seems maybe a good idea if it will deter
bankers from committing acts of financial terrorism. In the US,
capital punishment is legal. I say use it to go after the really
bad guys, the people of Wall Street, the people of the Central
Bank; stop killing poor black kids in Texas because you don't
like the way they look and go after the white guys on Wall Street
who commit genuine acts of financial terrorism. They've got
capital punishment - use it to better society, not just kill poor
kids.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.